Research Catalogue

This paper examines how generative AI transforms the indexical conditions of image-making and, with them, the ethical relation to Alterity that has long underpinned photographic practice. While conventional photography maintains a legible index—what Barthes called "that-has-been"—such indexicality has been lost in the case of AI images, where a single image is in fact produced from computationally dispersed archives in which any visible sign of origin becomes irretrievable. Crucially, the paper distinguishes between the disappearance of indexical presence and the persistence of the Derridean trace: though one can no longer perceive a clear index of an AI image, the trace of the Other nevertheless persists within the very generative process. The loss of a direct index to the Other thus enables an illusion of absolute ownership, where the image appears authored by the user's desire alone. Without the recalcitrant encounter with alterity in the image-making process, AI image generation risks becoming structurally auto-erotic. The paper therefore argues that recognition of Alterity is foundational to ethical image-making and thus essential to artistic research practice.

In contemporary society, digital devices increasingly dictate our behaviour, blurring the line between human agency and machine compliance while striving for smooth and seamless interactions. Sound signals plays a significant role in shaping our behaviour and how we experience these interactions. This research explores which aspects of our humanity may be diminished or transformed through these daily interactions with digital systems. At the same time, it asks how sound and interaction design might become tools to reimagine these systems - allowing for more embodied awareness rather than passive compliance.

This practice as research (PaR) investigates how somatic and dyadic methods can inform the act of filming within the field of screendance.Drawing on over six years of collaborative enquiry, the project introduces the moving camera witness—a method that integrates somatic awareness, witnessing practices from Authentic Movement, and the enquiry process of the ‘relating dyad’ into a filming practice. Working closely with somatic movers, this research repositions the camera as a somatic, relational, and perceptual tool that can work alongside and support a somatic movement practice, ultimately becoming a somatic filming practice in its own right. The research contributes new audiovisual works, scores, interviews, and theoretical insights to screendance, while extending existing concepts such as camera-witnessing (Goldhahn 2015, 2021), the somatic camera (Salzer, 2020) and applies Ingold’s idea of correspondence Ingold (2017, 2018, 2021) within the field of screendance. The result is a participatory and reflexive filmmaking method that highlights the co-emergent nature of moving, filming, and witnessing.

Pětice skladatelů – pedagog, tři studenti a jedna studentka se vydali naslouchat zvukové krajině polského předhůří Krkonoš, aby zkoumali vliv subjektivní percepce na výslednou podobu skladby. Nejdříve zaznamenávali své zvukoprostorové poslechové zkušenosti graficky do skicáků. Vzápětí formulovali tvůrčí záměry skladeb pro komorní ansámbl, které z těchto zkušeností vycházejí. V následujících čtyřech měsících zkomponovali studie s vědomím, že jsou určeny ke studiové realizaci. Kompoziční studie poté sami nahráli a celý proces společně reflektovali. Předložený text vstupuje do kontextu akustické ekologie, instrumentální syntézy a počítačem podporované skladby. Navazuje na kontinuální umělecký výzkum na katedře skladby HAMU v oblasti zvuku a prostoru a tvůrčích aplikací výsledků. Jeho cílem je prozkoumávat vztahy mezi subjektivní zvukoprostorovou zkušeností, volbou kompozičních strategií a výslednou podobou skladby. Five composers – one teacher and four students – set out to listen to the soundscape of the Polish foothills of the Giant Mountains in order to explore the influence of subjective perception on the final shape of a composition. First, they noted down their sound-spatial listening experiences graphically in sketchbooks. They then formulated creative ideas for chamber ensemble compositions based on these experiences. Over the next four months, they wrote compositional studies with the intention of recording them in the studio. They then recorded the studies themselves and reflected on the entire process together. The presented text enters the context of acoustic ecology, instrumental synthesis, and computer-assisted composition. It builds on continuous artistic research at the Department of Composition at HAMU in the field of sound and space and the creative application of the results. Its goal is to explore the relationships between subjective sound-spatial experience, the choice of compositional strategies, and the resulting shape of the composition.

As interaction with corporate artificial intelligence increasingly becomes a precondition for contemporary life, artists need to see beyond Generative AI (GenAI) technology as a discrete tool that makes generic products. Instead, they can imagine combinatorial approaches and conceptual frameworks for AI-enabled artworks. Through my practice-based research, the act of prompting multimodal GenAI models has been informed by comprehending an assemblage as a “framework of instruction” held together through poetic alliances, within which the output from one component feeds the process of another. Practical experiments explored an interrelation of body, text, and predictive technology, where an algorithmic prediction of human action conjured “biometric poetry” that was used to stimulate a language model. Working with archival film footage and digital puppets animated with motion-capture files gave rise to the idea of a camera’s field of view – with its bounded contents acting like a key – eliciting value from a language model in a novel form of story making. Potential erroneous inferences were perceived as a new form of chance operation and a characteristic of algorithmic remix as defined by Steve F. Anderson. This method has been further developed in a project that combines performance, waste material, object recognition, and a language model to explore how the manipulation of garbage can be rationalised by a machine to produce poetic texts as a commentary to action portrayed on a screen.

This paper delves into the dynamics and dramaturgical specifications of ANA, a theatrical installation engineered for co-creating narratives in a dialogic process with individual users. ANA embodies a collaborative storytelling environment that is used to communicate narrative and emotional information through multiple modalities, thereby bringing into focus an unexpectedly human essence in a human-machine interaction. Integrating GPT-4, emotion-recognition algorithms and a simulation of its own affective state, ANA engages users in a 10-minute interaction, fostering an immersive narrative exchange where the affective dimension of collaborative storytelling takes precedence. This paper explores the specific challenges of prompt design in this setting, focusing on the concept of emotional attuning, the feeling of being “in sync” with a machine throughout the interaction. Through an analytical lens encompassing cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and prompting techniques, the authors describe and reflect practices of employing multimodal sensorial data such as emotion recognition, and dramatic considerations, into the process of designing prompts. They also describe and reflect on their attempts to establish a form of meta-communication with the machine about the emotional aspects of the experience. By focusing on dramaturgical and improvisational strategies, this paper underscores the pivotal significance of emotional attunement and multimodal communication in fostering intimate technological engagement.